Lives of the English Poets / From Johnson to Kirke White, Designed as a Continuation of Johnson's Lives

by Henry Francis Cary

In this year he supplied Mr. Newbery with an Introduction to the World Displayed, a Collection of Voyages and Travels: till the publication of his Shakspeare, in 1765, the only writings acknowledged by himself were a Review of Tytler's Vindication of Mary Queen of Scots, in the Gentleman's Magazine; an Introduction to the Proceedings of the Committee for Clothing the French Prisoners; the Preface to Bolt's Dictionary of Trade and Commerce; a Dedication to the King, of Kennedy's Complete System of Astronomical Chronology, unfolding the Scriptures; and a Dedication to the Queen, of Hoole's Tasso.

In the course of this period, he made a short visit to Lichfield, and thus communicates his feelings on the occasion, in a letter dated July 20, 1762, to Baretti, his Italian friend, who was then at Milan.

Last winter I went down to my native town, where I found the streets much narrower and shorter than I thought I had left them, inhabited by a new race of people, to whom I was very little known. My play-fellows were grown old, and forced me to suspect that I am no longer young. My only remaining friend had changed his principles, and was become the tool of the predominant faction. My daughter-in-law, from whom I expected most, and whom I met with sincere benevolence, had lost the beauty and gaiety of youth, without having gained much of the wisdom of age. I wandered about for five days, and took the first convenient opportunity of returning to a place, where, if there is not much happiness, there is at least such a diversity of good and evil, that slight vexations do not fix upon the heart.

I think in a few weeks to try another excursion; though to what end? Let me know, my Baretti, what has been the result of your return to your own country; whether time has made any alteration for the better, and, whether, when the first rapture of salutation was over, you did not find your thoughts confessed their disappointment.

Henceforward Johnson had no longer to struggle with the evils of extreme poverty. A pension of £300 was granted to him, in 1762, by His Majesty. Before his acceptance of it, in answer to a question put by him to the Earl of Bute, in these words, "Pray, my Lord, what am I to do for the pension?" he was assured by that nobleman that it was not given him for any thing he was to do, but for what he had done. The definition he had given of the word pension, in his dictionary, that in England it was generally understood to mean pay, given to a state hireling, for treason to his country, raised some further scruples whether he ought himself to become a pensioner; but they were removed by the arguments, or the persuasion of Mr. Reynolds, to whom he had recourse for advice in this dilemma. What advice Reynolds would give him he must have known pretty well before-hand; but this was one of the many instances in which men, having first determined how to act, are willing to imagine that they are going for clearer information, where they in truth expect nothing but a confirmation of their own resolve. The liberality of the nation could not have been extended to one who had better deserved it. But he had a calamity yet more dreadful than poverty to encounter. The depression of his spirits was now become almost intolerable. "I would have a limb amputated," said he to Dr. Adams, "to recover my spirits." He was constantly tormented by harassing reflections on his inability to keep the many resolutions he had formed of leading a better life; and complained that a kind of strange oblivion had overspread him, so that he did not know what was become of the past year, and that incidents and intelligence passed over him without leaving any impression.

Neither change of place nor the society of friends availed to prevent or to dissipate this melancholy. In 1762, he made an excursion into Devonshire, with Sir Joshua Reynolds; the next year he went to Harwich, with Boswell; in the following, when his malady was most troublesome, the meeting which acquired the name of the Literary Club was instituted, and he passed a considerable time in Lincolnshire, with the father of Langton; and, in the year after, visited Cambridge, in the company of Beauclerk. Of the Literary Club, first proposed by Reynolds, the other members at its first establishment were Burke, Dr. Nugent, Beauclerk, Langton, Goldsmith, Chamier, and Sir John Hawkins. They met at the Turk's Head, in Gerrard-street, Soho, one evening in the week, and usually remained together till a late hour. The society was afterwards extended, so as to comprise a large number of those who were most eminent, either for their learning or their station in life, and the place of meeting has been since at different times changed to other parts of the town, nearer to the Parliament House, or to the usual resorts of gaiety. A club was the delight of Johnson. We lose some of our awe for him, when we contemplate him as mimicked by his old scholar Garrick, in the act of squeezing a lemon into the punch-bowl, and asking, as he looks round the company, in his provincial accent, of which he never got entirely rid, "Who's for poonch?" If there was any thing likely to gratify him more than a new club, it was the public testimony of respect from a learned body; and this he received from Trinity College, Dublin, in a diploma for the degree of Doctor of Laws, an honour the more flattering, as it came without solicitation.

At the beginning of 1766, his faithful biographer, James Boswell, who had known him for three years, found him in a good house in Johnson's court, Fleet-street, to which he had removed from lodgings in the Temple. By the advice of his physician, he had now begun to abstain from wine, and drank only water or lemonade. He had brought two companions into his new dwelling, such as few other men would have chosen to enliven their solitude. On the ground floor was Miss Anna Williams, daughter of Zechariah Williams, a man who had practised physic in Wales, and, having come to England to seek the reward proposed by Parliament for the discovery of the longitude, had been assisted by Johnson in drawing up an account of the method he had devised. This plan was printed with an Italian translation, which is supposed to be Baretti's, on the opposite page; and a copy of the pamphlet, presented by Johnson to the Bodleian, is deposited in that library. Miss Williams had been a frequent visitor at Johnson's before the death of his wife, and having after that event, come under his roof to undergo an operation for a cataract on her eyes with more convenience than could have been had in her own lodgings, continued to occupy an apartment in his house, whenever he had one, till the time of her death. Her disease ended in total blindness, which gave her an additional claim on his benevolence. When he lived in the Temple, it was his custom, however late the hour, not to retire to rest until he had drunk tea with her in her lodgings in Bolt-court. One night when Goldsmith and Boswell were with him, Goldsmith strutted off in the company of Johnson, exclaiming with an air of superiority, "I go to Miss Williams," while Boswell slunk away in silent disappointment; but it was not long, as Boswell adds, before he himself obtained the same mark of distinction. Johnson prevailed on Garrick to get her a benefit at the playhouse, and assisted her in preparing some poems she had written for the press, by both which means she obtained the sum of about £300. The interest of this, added to some small annual benefactions, probably hindered her from being any pecuniary burden to Johnson; and though she was apt to be peevish and impatient, her curiosity, the retentiveness of her memory, and the strength of her intellect, made her, on the whole, an agreeable companion to him. The other inmate, whose place was in one of his garrets, was Robert Levett, a practiser of physic among the lower people, grotesque in his appearance, formal in his manners, and silent before company: though little thought of by others, this man was so highly esteemed for his abilities by Johnson, that he was heard to say, he should not be satisfied though attended by all the College of Physicians, unless he had Levett with him. He must have been a useful assistant in the chemical processes with which Johnson was fond of amusing himself; and at one of which Murphy, on his first visit, found him in a little room, covered with soot like a chimney-sweeper, making aether. Beauclerk, with his lively exaggeration, used to describe Johnson at breakfast, throwing his crusts to Levett after he had eaten the crumb. The pathetic verses written by Johnson on his death, which happened suddenly three years before his own, shew with what tenderness of affection he regarded Levett. Some time after (1778), to this couple, who did not live in much harmony together, were added Mrs. Desmoulins, the daughter of Dr. Swinfen his god-father, and widow of a writing-master; Miss Carmichael, and, as Boswell thought, a daughter also of Mrs. Desmoulins, all of whom were lodged in his house. To the widow he allowed half-a-guinea a week, the twelfth part, as Boswell observes, of his pension. It was sometimes more than he could do, to reconcile so many jarring interests. "Williams," says he, in a letter to Mrs. Thrale, "hates every body: Levett hates Desmoulins and does not love Williams: Desmoulins hates them both. Poll loves none of them." Poll was Miss Carmichael, of whom I do not find that any thing else is recorded. Boswell ventured to call this groupe the seraglio of Johnson, and escaped without a rebuke.

From these domestic feuds he would sometimes withdraw himself to the house of Mr. Thrale, at Streatham, an opulent brewer, with whom his acquaintance had begun in 1765. With this open-hearted man he was always sure of a welcome reception for as long a time as he chose; and the mistress of the house, though after the death of her first husband and her subsequent marriage to an Italian she somewhat ungraciously remembered the petty annoyances which Johnson's untoward habits had occasioned her, was evidently pleased by his hearty expressions of regard, and flattered by his conversation on subjects of literature, in which she was herself well able to take a part.

In this year, his long promised edition of Shakspeare made its appearance, in eight volumes octavo. That by Steevens was published the following year; and a coalition between the editors having been effected, an edition was put forth under their joint names, in ten volumes 8vo., 1773. For the first, Johnson received £375; and for the second £100.[11] At the beginning of the Preface, he has marked out the character of our great dramatist with such a power of criticism, as there was perhaps no example of in the English language. Towards the conclusion, he has, I think, successfully defended him from the neglect of what are called the unities. The observation, that a quibble was the Cleopatra for which he lost the world, and was content to lose it, is more pointed than just. Shakspeare cannot be said to have lost the world; for his fame has not only embraced the circle of his own country, but is continually spreading over new portions of the globe; nor is there any reason to conclude that he would have acquiesced in such a loss. Like most other writers, he indulged himself in a favourite propensity, aware, probably, that if it offended some, it would win him the applause of others. One avenue of knowledge, that was open to Shakspeare in common with the rest of mankind, none of his commentators appear to have sufficiently considered. We cannot conceive him to have associated frequently with men of larger acquirements than himself, and not to have made much of their treasures his own. The conversation of such a man as Ben Jonson alone, supposing him to have made no more display of his learning than chance or vanity would occasionally produce, must have supplied ample sources of information to a mind so curious, watchful, and retentive, that it did not suffer the slightest thing to escape its grasp. Johnson is distinguished in his notes from the other commentators, chiefly by the acute remarks on many of the characters, and on the conduct of some of the fables, which he has subjoined to the different plays. In other respects he is not superior to the rest; in some, particularly in illustrating his author from antecedent or contemporary writers, he is inferior to them. A German critic of our own days, Schlegel, has surpassed him even in that which he has done best.

From Boswell I have collected an account of the little journeys with which he from time to time relieved the uniformity of his life. They will be told in order as they occur, and I hope will not weary the reader. The days of a scholar are frequently not distinguished by varieties even as unimportant as these. Johnson found his mind grow stagnant by a constant residence in the neighbourhood of Charing-cross itself, where he thought human happiness at its flood: and once, when moving rapidly along the road in a carriage with Boswell, cried out to his fellow-traveller, "Sir, life has few things better than this." In the winter of 1766 he went to Oxford, where he resided for a month, and formed an intimacy with Chambers, afterwards one of the judges in India. During this period, no publication appeared under his own name; but he furnished Miss Williams with a Preface to her Poems, and Adams with another for his Treatise on the Globes; and wrote the dedication to the King, prefixed to Gough's London and Westminster Improved. He seems to have been always ready to supply a dedication for a friend, a task which he executed with more than ordinary courtliness. In this way, he told Boswell, that he believed he "had dedicated to all the royal family round." But in his own case, either pride hindered him from prefixing to his works what he perhaps considered as a token of servility, or his better judgment restrained him from appropriating, by a particular inscription to one individual, that which was intended for the use of mankind.